Hey, financial institutions! I know you think it’s swell that you can use the Intarneb to interact with your customers. Heck, I think it’s swell, too. However, I understand you have a problem with the phishing. There is, after all, one born every minute, and phishers play on our hopes (Free stuff! New card services!) and our fears (Unauthorized expenditures! Security alerts!) to try to make sure that each and every one of us out here on the fabulous Intertron is, in fact, that sucker.

Some of us are nearly obscenely paranoid about this phishing thing, and on behalf of we few, we nervous few, we band of URL-checkers, I would like to make a request.

STOP USING MULTIPLE FRAKKING DOMAIN NAMES.

You heard me. You managed to register XYZbank.com AND XYZbanklovesyou.com AND XYZbankservices.com? Jolly good! Now slam a redirect on those puppies and never let me see them again. Because the more URLs your actual official website has, the more confusing it is to your customers, and the more likely it is that they’ll think XYZbankishawt.com is actually their financial institution’s web page. If you’re a big happy bank, you don’t need to flash your domain names to prove it to me. Just treasure them close to you. Lock your righteous domain names in a server closet instead of shouting them on the street corners like Phariseebank.com. Calligraph them on soft paper and pass them out at board meetings for use as toilet paper. I don’t care, just as long as I don’t see them any more. CHOOSE AN OFFICIAL DOMAIN AND STICK WITH IT. Thank you.